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Links 8/11/2012: AMD Lays Off Linux Developers, Fedora 18 Delayed Again





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Piwik among winners at open source awards
    Hundreds of people were due to celebrate the achievements of the open source software industry at its biennial awards in Wellington last night.

    Technology awards can resemble a Hairy Maclary book, with lots of repetition as the same familiar names doing the same things crop up on every page.

    But Don Christie, managing director of 150-person open source firm Catalyst IT, one of the award's top sponsors, said these had again attracted a healthy tally of about 100 entries.


  • CloudStack makes first release from Apache incubator
    The CloudStack project, based on Citrix's CloudStack code which was contributed to Apache earlier this year, has had its first official release from within the Apache Incubator, where it is currently being mentored and matured into a future top-level Apache project. The Apache CloudStack 4.0.0-incubating release offers a Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud orchestration system. Apache CloudStack competes with other open source IaaS platforms such as OpenStack, the European OpenNebula and the Amazon AWS-API compatible Eucalyptus.


  • Open Source Awards compared, contrasted with US thinking
    Having the Open Source Awards presentation ceremony last night, on the same night as the US election results were announced, allowed some analogies to be made between the spirit of open source and democracy.

    In both systems, everyone is welcome to make a contribution and the profit motive is absent, said Awards judge and senior advisor at the Inland Revenue Department, Austin Sinclair, introducing the award for Open Source use in government.


  • Events

    • Five Favorite Sessions from LinuxCon Europe 2012
      LinuxCon Europe has been buzzing with energy and lively ideas ever since its kickoff on Monday morning. As day two sessions wound down and everyone was gearing up for the much-anticipated Intel-sponsored reception at Gaudi’s Casa Batillo, we took a few moments to check in with attendees. They told us what’s inspiring them at this year’s conference—and how they’ll funnel that inspiration into action when they return to their workplaces next week.


    • LinuxCon Europe: Growing an Open Source Community
      The OpenStack team, a software community collaborating on a standard open source platform, had to solve this dilemma—and solve it fast—when the tech community became “ludicrously excited” about their new project. “We experienced growing pains … I guess I’m supposed to call them ‘opportunities’,” said Monty Taylor, manager of automation and deployment at Hewlett-Packard, and one of the creators of the project.

      In his Scaling an Open Source Community keynote presentation on Tuesday morning at LinuxCon Europe, Taylor explained how OpenStack overcame early challenges to create a truly non-hierarchical environment focused not only on open source, but also on open design, open development, and an open community.


    • ApacheCon NA, EclipseCon and Northeast Linux Fest calling for papers
      Several open source oriented conferences are calling for the submission of papers to their 2013 events. ApacheCon North America (NA), EclipseCon and the Northeast Linux Fest are all accepting talks from interested community members.




  • Web Browsers



    • Chrome

      • Google has released Chrome 23 for Windows, Mac and Linux
        The Chrome team has officially announced the latest update for Chrome, which arrives as Chrome 23 and for Windows, Mac and Linux users. More specifically, Chrome version 23.0.1271.64 has been released. This update will arrive automatically for current Chrome users. Or alternatively, those not using Chrome and those feeling like they simply cannot wait even a second — you can grab the latest version by navigating to google.com/chrome.


      • Google Releases Chrome 23 Stable for Linux


      • New Version of Chrome Adds Do Not Track Privacy and Boosts Batteries
        Google is out with the new Stable Release version 23 of the Chrome browser, which is notable for several reasons. Thanks to the way it handles video decoding, users on portable devices such as laptops who are, say, watching YouTube videos will get longer battery life. And, with this version of Chrome, Google has finally adopted the Do Not Track privacy protection scheme that lets users choose not to be followed when online.


      • Google Chrome Adds Support For Do Not Track






  • SaaS



  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • The Document Foundation Announces First Group of LibreOffice Certified Developers
      The Document Foundation has announced the first group of LibreOffice Certified Developers, recognized for their ability to hack LibreOffice code to develop new features or provide L3 support to enterprise users.

      Other skills and knowledge needed to become a Certified Developer include, researching and developing solutions to new or unknown issues, designing and developing one or more courses of action, evaluating each of them in a test case environment, and implementing the best solution to the problem. Once the solution is verified, it is delivered to the customer and given back to the community.




  • Education



  • Business



  • BSD

    • LLVM's Clang Is Finally The FreeBSD x86 Compiler
      After talking about FreeBSD's transition to Clang as the default C/C++ compiler rather than GCC, the move has finally happened where for x86/x86_64 systems the LLVM-based compiler has replaced GCC.




  • Project Releases

    • FreeMedForms project reaches version 0.8.0
      It is always a pleasure to announce the official release of the new stable version 0.8.0 of the FreeMedForms project. This anniversary version (the FreeMedForms EMR one and its main admin) brings two major innovations:




  • Public Services/Government



  • Openness/Sharing



    • Open Data



    • Open Access/Content

      • Australian university joins Stanford's open-source online platform
        Class2Go, developed by a group of Stanford engineers, will be the basis for online courses at the University of Western Australia accessible through mobile devices. The mobile app will then be available for use by Stanford – and anyone else.

        The beauty of open-source technology is that people around the world can build things together. Like bricolage, technology can grow flexibly as developers respond directly and creatively to users' needs and imaginations.


      • How Stanford plans to teach the world with open-source online classes
        Online classes are nothing new, but the University of Western Australia wants to take the technology one step further with the help of Stanford's recently launched Class2Go platform. Using an open-source approach to content creation, Class2Go not only allows educators to fine tune their teaching material, but also provides a tool that can be used by anyone regardless of location or enrollment status. As explained by PhysOrg, David Glance, director of the Centre for Software Practice at the University of Western Australia, feels that platform paves way to the new methods of learning used in universities, allowing students to take entire classes using their smartphone or tablet via an app.


      • rSmart to Share Higher Ed Open Source Expertise at the 2012 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference




    • Open Hardware

      • Arduino gets piggyback from Raspberry Pi
        The AlaMode board makes it possible to build a bridge between the Raspberry Pi mini-computer and the Arduino prototyping platform and the many shields available for it. Although the Arduino-compatible board connects to the Pi's GPIO header, the two boards operate independently, sharing data via the GPIO connectors. The AlaMode board is able to connect standard Arduino shields.


      • Open Source, Soccer-Playing Robots for All!
        What’s cooler than a humanoid robot? Why, a humanoid robot that plays soccer, of course. And you can get one for just 25 grand.

        The robot, developed by researchers at the University of Bonn, is more than just another droid headed for the intensely competitive RoboCup tournament. The little guy features some serious technical upgrades with a simple design and open source code so others can build their own ‘bot. The software and CAD files (.zip) are available on GitHub.






  • Standards/Consortia

    • APIs
      If you're creating Web apps, you're designing APIs. Here are some things to keep in mind before you begin.

      The Web was designed for people. When Tim Berners-Lee created the trio of standards that make up the Web—HTTP, HTML and URLs—the intention was for people to browse Web sites, submit information to them and be at the heart of the experience. But for some time now, the notion of the Web as a set of sites that people browse has been somewhat untrue. True, hundreds of millions of people visit an equally large number of sites each day; however, more and more of the visitors to sites aren't people, but programs.


    • The newsroom’s ally: Ally-Py
      Software architect Gabriel Nistor talks to Trevor Parsons about Ally-Py, the new Free Software framework designed to get the most from web APIs.






Leftovers



Recent Techrights' Posts

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"Victory Day" - Part II: Abject Defeat to Hypocrites and Objectionable People Who Strangle Women Whilst on Microsoft's Payroll
Someone is going to have to pay for this; it won't be us
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IBM is Rotting With "Zero Internal Jobs" and Many PIPs (Performance Improvement Plans) on the Way, Typically a Fast Track Towards Layoffs Without Severance
At risk of giving air(time) to tribal sentiments, the internal joke at IBM is that to IBM "AI" stands for "All Indian"
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we might be looking at about 50,000 people that Microsoft gets rid of this year
 
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